wake up from dream

The small houses built on the vast grassland, although not resembling tents as Lin Feng had imagined, still bore the characteristics of nomadic tribes. These houses were constructed with sturdy wooden poles as the framework, forming a structure resembling a cylinder. The spaces between the wooden poles were filled with flexible grass mats and woven materials whose textures had become indistinguishable. The roof was a thick thatched covering, weighed down by heavy stones. The base of the house was reinforced with hardened clay pillars, giving the house a simple yet sturdy appearance. Each of these cylindrical houses had a diameter of only about ten meters, with a similar outward appearance. Approximately a dozen of these houses were sparsely scattered within an area enclosed by fences, resembling a primitive "village."

Eager to understand the human civilization in this dream plane, Lin Feng did not carefully observe what was on the open space of the village. Instead, he directly pushed open the door of the nearest house. With a creaking sound, the door made of rattan and tough grass... was pulled down by him.

"This doesn't seem to have been recently abandoned..." Lin Feng looked astonished at the already rotten door frame. The door was hinged with ropes, but those once sturdy ropes had long rotted clean through. It seemed that the wolf pack's sense of time was indeed not very precise, and it was uncertain how long the shepherds here had been gone.

"I hope this house doesn't suddenly collapse." Lin Feng muttered to himself as he cautiously entered the shepherd's house. The data terminal floated beside him, emitting a steady light, serving as a makeshift flashlight, allowing Lin Feng to see everything inside the house clearly.

As expected, the house was empty. The previous occupants had left in an organized manner, so everything had been cleared out. The floor of the house was bare mud, but Lin Feng found fiber fabric in the corners of the walls, indicating that there had probably been carpets or mats here. On every wooden pole of the curved walls, there were metal hooks, which should have once held weapons or tools. In the center of the house, the ground was slightly lower, indicating a possible place for a hearth.

Other than that, there were no other traces left.

Lin Feng was somewhat disappointed. It seemed that there were no valuable relics here, not even a piece of sheepskin.

However, the existence of these small houses could still explain some things: there was indeed human civilization in the dream plane, and its level of development was probably not low. They had metalworking (as evidenced by the metal hooks left on the walls), had construction techniques, and could survive on the grasslands surrounded by wolf packs. The dream plane was definitely not a desolate and bizarre space inhabited only by beasts and monsters—although Raven12345 had told Lin Feng this before, it was only after witnessing it firsthand that Lin Feng truly realized it.

"Do you know about the dream plane?" Lin Feng looked at the data terminal floating beside him, "Hey, stop shaking, stabilize the light a bit, will you?"

"Go back and study the manual properly! You've never used this machine properly! This machine is a high-tech assistive device, not a flashlight, not a brick, not a meteor hammer, and certainly not a pet for you to play around with!" The data terminal complained bitterly, but still answered Lin Feng's question, "This machine does not have much preset information. As a device designed for arbitrators, it only comes with necessary work modules preinstalled. However, this machine can retrieve some information from the local cosmic channel... Retrieval complete. Characteristics of the dream plane: Realism, Vastness, Linear Development, Self-consistency, Influence on the Real World. Need an explanation for each?"

"You explain, I'll listen." Lin Feng said as he searched the shepherd's house for any possible valuable clues.

"Realism: The dream plane possesses a definite sense of reality. It is a real world with effective and calculable rules. Although it is distorted, everything in it has an internal logic. All aspects of this space are not illusions. Vastness: Due to various reasons, research on the dream plane has never truly begun, but based on several rough spatial sensing results, the size of the dream plane is likely comparable to the real world. Its vastness is worth anticipating. If the management gods of this universe decide to start a major exploration of the dream plane, the arbitrators will be kept busy. Linear Development: The dream plane is a space of development and change. Although it is very strange, the things inside it do change linearly. There are historical changes and the evolution of all things here, and everything has linear causality. Therefore, there are no unexplainable, unreasoned things here. This term is a new entry, and its realism needs to be verified. Self-consistency: Everything in the dream plane is self-consistent, which is also a manifestation of its realism. Influence on the real world... This term is redundant, and the machine feels there is no need to explain it."

Lin Feng half-listened and half-forgot, picking out the parts he could understand. Suddenly, his attention was drawn to a flash in the corner of the room.

He walked over quickly and found a small piece of metal buried halfway in the mud.

At the sight of the small metal piece, Lin Feng felt a tremor in his heart. A familiar feeling spread from the depths of his heart. When he dug out the metal piece, he was truly stunned:

It was a diamond-shaped metal piece, less than the size of his palm, with a surface partially corroded. The material seemed to be iron, and what was most noticeable on the metal piece were some patterns that looked like hieroglyphs. Lin Feng stared at those patterns for a long time, finally confirming that he had seen them not long ago—it was the metal piece he had found when he and Vivian were rummaging through the basement trash!

"Why would this be in my house..." Lin Feng was astonished, only to be interrupted by a strange howl from outside the house.

"Whoo—whoo—" The intermittent high and low whistling of the wind seemed to come from all directions, as if by appointment, suddenly from all directions. This was followed by the sound of the house shaking and rattling. Startled, Lin Feng looked up and in that instant, he saw the entire roof of the house being blown off!

The thatched roof, weighed down by heavy stones, disappeared in an instant, and the bright starlight and moonlight flooded the entire house. Before he could understand what was happening, the walls of the house also began to shake violently and were completely uprooted from the ground!

"Hurricane" flashed in his mind, but Lin Feng had no time to react before feeling a lightness under his feet, and then the entire house flew into the sky!

Lin Feng's strengthened body gave him tremendous strength and a robust physique, but it didn't give him the ability to stand as firm as a mountain. The sudden and bizarre hurricane on the grassland had swept this unlucky child to who knows how many meters high in an instant. He didn't even know what was happening before he found himself spinning uncontrollably in the air for more than thirty rotations. In the mad whirl, Lin Feng constantly collided with various things that were also swept up into the air, dizzy and miserable. However, he soon discovered that the thing he collided with the most

 was not the fragments of the house torn apart by the wind, but a glowing metal piece about the size of a palm. He was instantly furious: "Data terminal! Are you here to take revenge?!"

While spinning around Lin Feng's head, the data terminal explained earnestly, "The machine really can't control the direction. This hurricane is so terrifying..."

"Terrorizing my ass! You've hit me in the face against the wind four... five times!" Lin Feng was furious but remembered the main issue, "What's going on? How can there be a sudden tornado on such a clear day?"

"How should this machine know? The natural disaster warning function of this machine was messed up by Commander 12345! He replaced it with a trial version of the Extreme Weather Radar, and the trial period just ended last night—do something about it and complain to your superiors!"

"You..." Lin Feng had only cursed for two words when he suddenly felt his vision darken.

A sense of weightlessness hit him, followed by a thud. Lin Feng felt himself fall onto a hard surface. Opening his eyes, he saw his familiar bedroom, with the bright sunlight shining on him.

As the dream woke him up, the predetermined awakening time set before entering the dream plane had arrived.

Still immersed in the palpitations caused by being swept up into the air by the tornado, Lin Feng gasped for a long time before finally managing to lower his heartbeat to a normal rate. He then felt something hard poking under his buttocks.

Reaching out, he discovered a diamond-shaped metal piece.